Yachts moored in Red Wharf Bay (Traeth Coch), Anglesey

Traeth Coch (Welsh for Red Beach) is a wide sandy bay and an area of outstanding natural beauty on the east coast of the island of Anglesey in Wales. The bay is also known in English as Red Wharf Bay and lies between the villages of Pentraeth and Benllech.

Each year the Red Wharf Bay Sailing Club Anglesey Offshore Dinghy Race takes place from Beaumaris to Traeth Bychan. The race over 14 miles up the Menai Strait and down the Anglesey coast is an exhilarating sail.

There was once a railway line which terminated at the bay, the Red Wharf Bay branch line, which left the Anglesey Central Railway at Pentre Berw.

Anglesey (/ˈæŋɡəlsiː/; Welsh: Ynys Môn, [ˈənɨs ˈmoːn]) is an island off the north west coast of Wales. Two bridges span the Menai Strait, connecting it to the mainland: the Menai Suspension Bridge designed by Thomas Telford in 1826 and the Britannia Bridge. Although serving as the chief part of the kingdom of Gwynedd, Anglesey is no longer part of that county; instead, Anglesey, Holy Island, and other nearby islands make up the current Isle of Anglesey County.

North Wales (Welsh: Gogledd Cymru) is the northernmost unofficial region of Wales. Retail, transport and educational infrastructure are centred around the largest town of Wrexham, with other important areas including Rhyl, Llandudno and the small city of Bangor. It is bordered to the south by the counties of Ceredigion and Powys in Mid Wales and to the east by the counties of Shropshire in the West Midlands and Cheshire in North West England. North Wales is divided into three traditional regions, viz; Upper Gwynedd (or Gwynedd above the Conwy defined as the area north of the River Dyfi and west of the River Conwy); Lower Gwynedd (or Gwynedd below the Conwy also known as the Perfeddwlad and defined as the region east of the River Conwy and west of the River Dee) and Ynys Môn (or Anglesey), a large island off the north coast.^{[citation needed]}. Northern Powys is geographically in northern Wales but not in North Wales region. The area of North Wales is 6,172 square km (Slightly larger than Brunei).

An estuary is a partly enclosed coastal body of brackish water with one or more rivers or streams flowing into it, and with a free connection to the open sea.

Estuaries form a transition zone between river environments and ocean environments and are subject to both marine influences, such as tides, waves, and the influx of saline water; and riverine influences, such as flows of fresh water and sediment. The inflows of both sea water and fresh water provide high levels of nutrients in both the water column and sediment, making estuaries among the most productive natural habitats in the world.

Most existing estuaries were formed during the Holocene epoch by the flooding of river-eroded or glacially scoured valleys when the sea level began to rise about 10,000-12,000 years ago. Estuaries are typically classified by their geomorphological features or by water circulation patterns and can be referred to by many different names, such as bays, harbors, lagoons, inlets, or sounds, although some of these water bodies do not strictly meet the above definition of an estuary and may be fully saline.

The banks of many estuaries are amongst the most heavily populated areas of the world, with about 60% of the world's population living along estuaries and the coast. As a result, many estuaries are suffering degradation by many factors, including sedimentation from soil erosion from deforestation, overgrazing, and other poor farming practices; overfishing; drainage and filling of wetlands; eutrophication due to excessive nutrients from sewage and animal wastes; pollutants including heavy metals, polychlorinated biphenyls, radionuclides and hydrocarbons from sewage inputs; and diking or damming for flood control or water diversion.

Wales ⁱ/ˈweɪlz/ (Welsh: Cymru; Welsh pronunciation: [ˈkəm.rɨ] ( listen)) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It had a population in 2011 of 3,063,456, and has a total area of 20,779 km² (8,023 sq mi). Wales has over 1,200 km (750 mi) of coastline, and is largely mountainous, with its highest peaks in the north and central areas, including Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa), its highest summit. The country lies within the north temperate zone, and has a changeable, maritime climate.

The intertidal zone, also known as the foreshore and seashore and sometimes referred to as the littoral zone, is the area that is above water at low tide and under water at high tide (in other words, the area between tide marks). This area can include many different types of habitats, with many types of animals like starfish, sea urchins, and some species of coral. The well known area also includes steep rocky cliffs, sandy beaches, or wetlands (e.g., vast mudflats). The area can be a narrow strip, as in Pacific islands that have only a narrow tidal range, or can include many metres of shoreline where shallow beach slopes interact with high tidal excursion.

Organisms in the intertidal zone are adapted to an environment of harsh extremes. Water is available regularly with the tides but varies from fresh with rain to highly saline and dry salt with drying between tidal inundations. The action of waves can dislodge residents in the littoral zone. With the intertidal zone's high exposure to the sun, the temperature range can be anything from very hot with full sun to near freezing in colder climates. Some microclimates in the littoral zone are ameliorated by local features and larger plants such as mangroves. Adaptation in the littoral zone allows the use of nutrients supplied in high volume on a regular basis from the sea which is actively moved to the zone by tides. Edges of habitats, in this case land and sea, are themselves often significant ecologies, and the littoral zone is a prime example.